No equity for an old farmer

Bob Best was leaning against his pickup truck in the parking lot of the farm stand/butcher shop that he used to own off Route 46 just outside Hackettstown. It's a handsome place, a sort of Pennsylvania Dutch barn-like structure next to a corn field.

"My wife and I looked all over the northeast to find the design," he told me. "We worked all our life for that. And now I'm nothing but a tenant."

How did this happen? Simple. Our politicians decided they were going to create a big park without paying for it. The bill was called the Highlands Act, and on Aug. 10, 2004, Gov. James E. McGreevey signed it into law.

Two days later, Best was set to close on a new mortgage for the farm stand, one with a lower interest rate. That mortgage was backed by the multimillion-dollar value of his 47-acre farm across the highway. Prior to Aug. 10, that land would have sold for millions. The 10 acres fronting the highway were zoned commercial. The back 37 acres were residential, with room for perhaps five building lots.

But once the name "James E. McGreevey" was inked onto the line at the bottom of Senate Bill 1, all the development value disap peared. The only building that would ever be permitted on that land for all eternity was the Best house. Bob Best now had a small home on a busy highway with a big back yard. The bank knew what that was worth.

"On the 13th, the bankers foreclosed, basically," Best said. He now pays the new owner to rent the building he built back in 1988.

This wasn't supposed to happen, according to the geniuses in Trenton. Theoretically, the bank was supposed to realize that the state had promised to compensate land owners for any equity lost be cause of the law. And theoretically, the bankers were supposed to take this into account.

But banks work according to reality, not theory. And like everyone else, the bankers knew the state had put aside about $2,000 an acre to compensate the owners of hundreds of thousands of acres of land that was selling for more than 10 times that much before the bill be came law.

So what? Best is a farmer, and he can still farm his land. That's what the environmentalists and the Trenton crowd say. But it's painful for Bob Best to walk, let alone farm. In fact, it's painful just to watch him walk. At 72, he needed a cane just to make the short hike from the store to his pickup truck.

We got into the pickup and drove up the hillsides covered with peach orchards. When we got to the top we looked out over the beautiful Waterloo Valley. There was hardly a building in sight. It's state-owned land as far as the eye can see.

"How were they able to purchase all that?" Best asked. "And now that they want the rest of the land, there's nothing left to pay for it."

Good question. He had an answer.

"Look at that monstrosity."

He pointed to a giant townhouse complex on a hill over toward Budd Lake. The complex was forced on Mount Olive Township by another bad bill passed by the Trenton crowd, the affordable housing law. Under the pretext of providing affordable housing, the legislators let developers build high-density housing on the hills. The ugliness of these developments fueled support for the Highlands law. It was a classic good guy/bad guy routine.

Best doesn't want to sell his land at the moment. But if he did, there would be few takers.

"I could sell it to someone if they were crazy enough to want to farm," said Best.

But no one's that crazy. The wholesale price for produce isn't high enough to support farming in high-cost New Jersey. You either have to have your own retail outlet or you need to get into "agri-tourism," as have many farmers in the region.

"Isn't it a shame a farmer can't make enough for his product that he has to get into entertaining the public to make a living?" he asked me.

As we drove back down the hill, Best stopped the truck and reached out the window to pluck a peach from a tree. He handed it to me. It was remarkably sweet, the perfect accompaniment to the cup of coffee I'd brought along from his store.

The Trenton politicians claim they want to preserve this sort of thing forever. But they don't want to pay. That doesn't stop them from patting each other on the back for being friends of the environment, though.

I devoutly hope there is a circle of hell reserved for those who purport to do good deeds with other people's money. If there is, all but 12 of the 120 legislators who held office in 2004 will burn in it.

Paul Mulshine may be reached at pmulshine@starledger.com. This column and his blog may be found at NJVoices.com.